Litecoin (LTC)
Litecoin ranks #15 of 484 cryptocurrencies. On a list that also counts tokens, memecoins, wrapped coins, staked derivatives and stablecoins it appears at #25: 10 of the 24 assets ahead of it are not native coins but tokens or claims. A token is issued on a host blockchain rather than running its own; a claim stands for an asset already counted. Of the 17 non-native assets CoinSpectrum lists above it by market cap, 13 are claims on other assets and 4 are tokens.
| CoinSpectrum Grade | A+ · 85/100 · provisional |
|---|---|
| Rank among cryptocurrencies | #15 |
| Rank counting claims | #25 |
| Market capitalisation | $3.9B |
| Price | $50.00 |
| Circulating supply | 77,812,817 LTC |
| Maximum supply | 84,000,000 LTC |
| Consensus family | Proof of Work |
| Consensus mechanism | Scrypt |
| Own hashrate | 2.62 PH/s |
| Active addresses a day | 254,427 October 2026 median |
| Network purpose | Payments |
| Ledger type | Single-asset ledger |
| Launch distribution | No premine |
| Regulatory class | Commodity |
Market figures from the 10 November 2026 build. Open the live view for every exchange's price, and charts.
CoinSpectrum Grade (Source)
A+ — 85 out of 100, provisional (from 10 of 10 sections, 10 November 2026 build). With what is not yet measured anywhere from nothing to full marks, the score would be 83 to 85 (A+ to A+).
| Section and criteria | Score | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| Consensus | 10 | average of 2 criteria |
| By leader (its largest chain's market cap) (Source) | 10 | Proof of work: 10 of 10 on the ladder of consensus families ranked by their largest chain's market cap |
| By family (all its chains' market cap) (Source) | 10 | Proof of work: 10 of 10 on the ladder of families ranked by the combined market cap of their chains |
| Supply | 9.5 | the supply scale times 0.9, and a point for a fixed cap that holds |
| Supply (21 million scores 10) | 9.4 | fixed maximum supply of 84 million |
| Distribution | 9.8 | average of 4 parts |
| Holder concentration (Source) | – | Not yet measured |
| Active addresses | 9.2 | 254,427 addresses active a day, the median of October 2026's 31 days (counted by CoinSpectrum from the chain's own blocks) source |
| Premine (allocated at launch) | 10 | Fair launch: no premine |
| Fundraising (share sold) (Source) | 10 | No sale of the coin |
| Developer share (after launch) | 10 | No developer share: every new coin goes to the miners who produce blocks |
| Decentralisation | 9.9 | average of 4 parts |
| Governance (Source) | 10 | No authority can halt the chain or freeze funds: No party can freeze or claw back coins; no halts on record. source |
| No central team (Source) | 10 | No central team: A small group of maintainers under litecoin-project, some funded by Litecoin Foundation grants; no company approves protocol changes. source |
| Who can mint (Source) | 10 | Open to anyone with hardware: anyone can produce blocks by mining, no permission needed |
| Nodes (Source) | 9.7 | 816 reachable nodes (source: Blockchair) |
| Security | 7.8 | 6.3 of 8 points source |
| Pool diversity (Largest pool 50% 0 to 20% 10, largest three 90% 0 to 50% 10; 2 points) | 4.8 | largest 33.8%, largest three 73.5% |
| Network activity (Transactions a day, 250 0, 500,000 or more 10; 2 points) | 8.5 | about 162,900 transactions a day |
| Hashrate (Own work 5, its power 1 kW 0 to 10 GW 5; 1 point) | 9.1 | own work 5; about 550 MW, 4.1 of 5; the largest on its algorithm |
| Clients (Separate code and teams 10, separate code or teams 9, a fork by the same team or a stale second 8; one client: a new version within 12 months 7, 24 months 6, none in 24 months 5, none in 48 months 3; a second in development +0.5, a second seen running +1, 8 at most with one client; chain ended 0; 1 point) | 7 | one client, latest version Sep 2026 |
| Open source (Node software) | ✓ | |
| No 51% attack (Nor a deep reorganisation, five years) | ✓ | |
| Scalability | 7.4 | average of 5 parts source |
| Fees ($0.001 or less 10, $1 or more 0) | 10 | typical fee $0.00045 |
| Throughput (2,478 a second, the busiest network's peak day, 10; 121, the median of the ten busiest, 5) | 3.4 | about 47 simple transactions a second |
| Block time (10 minutes 10, less either side) | 7.8 | a block every 2.5 minutes |
| Block space per 10 minutes (24 MB or more 10: the ten busiest networks' median demand, 16.4 MB, and half again for growth) | 9.3 | 4 MB limit, 16 MB per 10 minutes |
| Features (3 checks) | 6.7 | 2 of 3 passed |
| Fast payments (Safe to accept within seconds · Whitepaper abstract, §1, §2 and §11) | ✗ | 2.5-minute blocks, and Litecoin Core (Bitcoin Core 0.21 base) relays BIP125 opt-in replace-by-fee, so zero-confirmation is not network-protected. |
| Pruned nodes (Old history dropped, every rule checked · Whitepaper §7) | ✓ | Litecoin Core -prune deletes old blocks and keeps the UTXO set. |
| Light clients (Payments verified from headers · Whitepaper §8) | ✓ | Bitcoin-style SPV with headers and Merkle proofs. |
| Privacy | 8 | 8 of 10: whitepaper privacy 7 of 7, extra features 1 of 3 source |
| Protocol level privacy (Keys not tied to an identity · Whitepaper §10) | 10 | Anyone can generate keys and receive and send coins; the consensus rules carry no identity check. |
| UTXO ledger (Separate outputs, change to a new address · Whitepaper §2, §9) | 10 | Coins are separate unspent outputs: a payment spends whole outputs and sends the change to a new address, so the coins in one wallet need not share a history. |
| HD addresses (A new address for each payment, unlinked · Whitepaper §10) | 10 | BIP32 extended public key (xpub): a watch-only wallet derives each new receiving address without the private key |
| Hidden amounts (Amounts confidential) | 5 | MWEB extension block (Litecoin Core 0.21.2, activated May 2022): Mimblewimble hides amounts; optional. Optional: 5 of 10. |
| Hidden parties (Sender and receiver hidden) | 0 | MWEB gives receivers stealth addresses (LIP-0004), but spent outputs are not hidden by ring signatures or ZK proofs. |
| Network privacy (Origin hidden by default) | 0 | Litecoin Core relays transactions directly; Tor is optional configuration. |
| Programmability | 5.6 | 5 of 9 points source |
| Token issuance (Through a metaprotocol) | 1 | Ordinals-Lite/LTC-20: read by indexers, not validated by the chain's nodes |
| Smart contracts (Scripting for spending conditions) | 1 | Bitcoin-derived Script limited to spending conditions; MWEB adds confidential transfers, not programmability. |
| Multisig and time locks (Without a third party) | ✓ | P2SH multisig plus CLTV (BIP 65, block 918,684) and CSV (block 1,201,536). |
| Atomic swaps (With other chains) | ✓ | HTLCs in standard Script; Garden runs Litecoin HTLC swaps. |
| Native DEX (Trades the coin itself, not a claim) | ✓ | Traded as itself, not as a wrapped token or a claim: THORChain; BasicSwap; Komodo DeFi; Bisq; its own chain's DEXes (Litecoin, DefiLlama). |
| Cross-chain messaging (Verified by the chain itself) | ✗ | No protocol messaging to other chains. |
| NFTs (Carried by the chain's rules) | ✗ | No token type in consensus; LTC-20 and Ordinals are inscriptions read by indexers. |
| Demand | 8.5 | average of 7 measures |
| Exchanges (10 or more: 10) | 10 | 46 exchanges |
| Daily volume ($10K 0, $1B or more 10) | 7.7 | $82,887,144 traded in 24 hours; #38 by volume on the exchanges the site reads (scored on the median day of the last 30, $74,926,299) |
| Turnover (volume ÷ market cap, 5% a day: 10) | 7.5 | 1.7% of its market cap a day, median of the last 30 days |
| Order-book depth (±2% of the price ÷ market cap, 1%: 10) | 7.9 | $9,357,832 within 2% of the price on 9 exchanges, 0.24% of its market cap, median of the last 15 days |
| Market cap ($1M 0, $10B or more 10) | 9 | $3.9B, 9 on a scale of 2.5 points per tenfold |
| Paper trading (futures, options and margin ÷ market cap, 0%: 10, 100%: 0) | 7.2 | futures, options and margin positions 7.7% of its market cap |
| Wallet support (wallets that hold it, 10 or more: 10) | 10 | 23 wallets in the site's wallet directory |
| Record | 8.7 | average of 3 criteria |
| Age (years since genesis) (Source) | 10 | 15 full years since genesis. Genesis block mined 7 October 2011. |
| Development (work, fixes, vulnerabilities) | 6 | 3 positive, 1 negative source |
| Positive | ||
| Steady work, 6 of 6 | ✓ | 303 commits in 12 of the last 12 months (github.com/litecoin-project/litecoin); litecoin-project/litecoin v0.21.5.8, 2026-09-12; 5 releases in 24 months. |
| Shipped a security fix in two years, +1 | ✓ | Litecoin Core 0.21.5.4, 25 Apr 2026: MWEB consensus fix after the Mar 2026 exploit. |
| Exploit of the chain, 2026-04-25, flaw fixed (the security fix above) | ✓ | Attackers used an MWEB consensus bug, privately patched in March but not yet run by all mining pools, to peg out invalid LTC to third-party DEXs while a denial-of-service attack knocked patched pools offline; the network replaced 13 blocks (3,095,930-3,095,943) to undo the invalid transactions. theblock.co coindesk.com |
| Negative | ||
| Unfixed vulnerability, disclosed 2024-09-18, −1 | ✗ | CVE-2019-25220: a long low-difficulty header chain can exhaust memory because the node has no headers pre-synchronisation; still in Litecoin v0.21.5.8. bitcoincore.org github.com github.com |
| Conduct (origin, claims, halts) | 10 | 3 positive, 0 negative source |
| Positive record | ||
| Launched with a stated purpose, not as a joke | ✓ | |
| No claims by its founders that contradict its own design | ✓ | |
| No halt, freeze or reversal in five years | ✓ | |
Ten sections, weighted equally, each 0 to 10: consensus (the two ladders), supply (the supply scale and a fixed cap that holds), distribution (premine, fundraising, developer share, holders), decentralisation (governance, no central team, who can mint, nodes), security, scalability, privacy, programmability (what the scripting layer can do beyond the whitepaper's payment system), demand, and record (age, development, conduct). They are built from the criteria in the second table: privacy, scalability, security and decentralisation are the Cryptocurrency Standards among them, as follows: privacy (the whitepaper's three checks a base of 7 of 10, three extra features up to 3 more), scalability (four measures and three features), security (pool diversity, network activity, hashrate, clients and two checks) and decentralisation (governance, no central team, who can mint, nodes, holders, premine, fundraising and developer share); programmability (token issuance, smart contracts and five checks) follows them, and supply and demand are two: the supply, scored against 21 million, and demand, the average of seven measures of the market and the wallets. Provisional: parts marked — are not yet measured and are left out of the average. A rating of structure and market depth, not a price forecast or investment advice. How the grade is built · Highest-graded cryptocurrencies.
Proof of Work coins
Bitcoin BTCA+
Zcash ZECA+
Dogecoin DOGEA+
Monero XMRA+
Bitcoin Cash BCHA++
Ethereum Classic ETCA
Kaspa KASA+All Proof of Work chains →Proof of Stake coins
Ethereum ETHA+
BNB BNBA
Solana SOLA+
TRON TRXA
Hyperliquid HYPEB
Cardano ADAA
NEAR Protocol NEARAAll Proof of Stake chains →Supply
77,812,817 of a maximum 84,000,000 LTC are in circulation — 92.6% of the total that will ever exist.
Launch and allocation
| Nodes or validators | 816 |
|---|
The work behind it
Litecoin is secured by 2.62 PH/s of its own work. Hashrate does not compare across algorithms — a SHA-256 hash and a Scrypt hash cost different amounts to produce.
What a regulator has said
Named a digital commodity in the joint SEC-CFTC interpretation (Mar 17, 2026).
The regulator's position, reported as stated, not CoinSpectrum's. Assets nobody has ruled on are left unclassified rather than sorted by a guess.
How CoinSpectrum ranks Litecoin
Litecoin is #15 among cryptocurrencies and #25 in the market ranking, which lists wrapped coins, staked derivatives, stablecoins and tokens alongside them. CoinSpectrum counts an asset once, and counts only cryptocurrencies: assets with their own blockchain and their own consensus. A wrapped coin, a staked derivative or a stablecoin is a claim on something already counted; a token, memecoin or otherwise, runs on another chain's blocks. All of them are listed, each in its own section, and none is added to the total. The 10 places between Litecoin's two ranks are held by claims and tokens, not by other networks. The methodology sets out the rule and the counting rule argues for it.
The price above is the median of the exchanges the site reads live, checked every minute and cross-checked against a market snapshot (how market data is gathered). The grade is scored on published criteria, each with its source (the method). The site is independent, nothing on it is a paid placement, and its statements are signed (about CoinSpectrum, the manifesto).
See the 1 wrapped and staked claim on Litecoin →
Wallets that hold Litecoin
Read on the site
- Cryptocurrency privacy: the six qualities that make a coin private · blog
- Hashrate is not one number · blog
- How CoinSpectrum ranks exchanges · blog
- Mining profitability and hashrate sites compared · blog
- Regulatory classes of cryptocurrencies: commodity, contested, security, unclassified · blog
- Why ten-minute blocks: what faster blocks cost every node and wallet, measured · blog
- Which cryptocurrencies have a fixed supply? Capped and uncapped coins · journal
- Does more trading make a coin less volatile? Turnover, futures and six months of prices · journal
- The proof-of-work hashrate leaderboard doesn't exist · journal
- Where a DEX runs, and what it actually trades · journal